Work Text:
i.
Mary is just leaving her hotel in New York when she is suddenly knocked over by a man running at full speed, leaving her sitting on the ground and the contents of her suitcase spread out over the pavement.
The man, to his credit, stops, and crouches down next to her, heaving out a, ‘oh, I’m sorry’ between gasping for air and frantically gathering her clothes together.
It’s only then that the reality of the situation hits Mary, and she really looks at the interrupter, and freezes as she realises that he looks like the spitting image of a guy she used to have a crush on in high school, only some decades older.
At this point, the guy stops as well, squinting at her face.
“Mary O’Sullivan?” he asks, and Mary squints right back at him.
“Ethan Hunt?”
Ethan grins at her and she has to remind herself that she is happily married, even if his grin still gives her the same butterflies in her stomach as it did, decades ago.
Then, Ethan reaches up to his ear – his hair is a bit longer and covers it, but he must be wearing Bluetooth headphones because he seems to be in the middle of a phone call, saying, “yeah, I know, Benji, I’m coming –“ he stops, listens, then continues, “no, I’m not flirting with her, I just bumped into someone from my high school –” as he speaks, his hands continue to collect her things from the floor and into her suitcase “– okay, okay, I’m coming.”
He's clearly amused by what the person on the other line is saying.
Then, Ethan turns back to look at Mary. “Listen, I’d love to chat, but I’m kind of in the middle of something – ” he waves in the direction he was running in, and Mary shakes her head, dazed.
“Go,” she tells him, and then, “it was nice seeing you.”
“You too,” he grins at her, then gets back off the floor and takes off sprinting down the streets of New York at breath-taking speed.
Mary frowns to herself.
Was he holding a gun?
ii.
Paul has been working for the IMF’s tech department for exactly two weeks, and he has already gathered the most important information there is to know. Firstly, the only coffee machine that lets out a decent espresso in the building is situated in a janitor’s closet on the third floor. Secondly, Ethan Hunt, whoever he is, is the IMF’s version of a messiah. Thirdly, Benjamin Dunn, or, Benji, as he’d introduced himself in their first meeting, is getting on his nerves.
He doesn’t get Benji, is the thing. The guy can chat your ear off about whatever topic the conversation lands on – or more precisely, is forced to land on, because when Benji wants to talk about whatever interests him at the moment he will talk about it. Added to this, almost every time Paul looks over at the desk Benji only semi-regularly frequents, he sees him playing video games on all three of his monitors. He doesn’t even try to hide it whenever Brandt or another one of their senior officers come up to his desk, which is frequently – in fact, Paul has heard him whine at Brandt for interrupting his game on more than one occasion.
Despite all these faults, he seems to be in their bosses’ good books, because he keeps being invited to secret meetings that Paul is not invited to, and it’s starting to be annoying. Apparently, he’s a field agent but currently on medical leave because of a bullet wound, which he never stops complaining about. The field agent clearance is probably why he gets to go to these briefings, but Paul can’t help but feel annoyed that this annoying guy with a horrible work ethic gets to know so much more than him. More than once, Paul observes Benji and Brandt huddled together at Benji’s desk, whispering to each other and pointing at things on some screen or file, worry written on their faces.
Paul gets first row to all of this – well, second row, as his desk is two desks away from Benji’s at the back of the big office floor of the tech department at IMF headquarters. It means that whenever Paul looks up, he is directly in line of sight with Benji’s monitors and is close enough to pick up snippets of conversation.
Then, Paul comes in on Monday morning and finds Benji already sitting at his desk, sending him with a giddy grin as he walks past his desk.
“Morning, Paul,” he calls in his direction, sounding cheerier than he has in the past two weeks.
Paul nods in his direction, slightly confused by the guy’s happiness, but he decides to ignore it and settles in at his own desk.
Throughout the morning, he keeps sneaking glances at Benji and quite often finds him, in turn, sneaking glances at his phone on his desk with that big grin of his. Nothing happens, though, and Paul is hellbent on shrugging the whole thing off when, shortly before his lunch break, Brandt walks in with a guy about his size at his side and the atmosphere in the room immediately shifts to away from the loose, regular-work-day vibe to something else – although nothing visibly changes, it feels like suddenly, everyone at the desks around Paul is paying attention.
Paul sends his desk-neighbor Mike a quizzical look. Mike points at the guy next to Brandt and mouths, “that’s Ethan Hunt.”
Given all the outlandish stories Paul has heard from his colleagues in only the last two weeks, the sudden change in atmosphere makes sense. Paul squints at the guy in casual jeans and a leather jacket and tries to imagine him hanging off the Burj Khalifa. He doesn’t really look like someone who would do such a thing, but then again, IMF agents are trained to hide their competence to slip under the radar and there is definitely an air of something special around Hunt.
By now, the pair has made their way all the way to the back of the room and comes to a halt by Benji’s desk, where Benji is already waiting for them with that big grin of his turned up ten times in watt power, his computer screens for once – thankfully – empty of any video games.
Then, to Paul’s horror, Benji takes one of the top-secret files from the endless stack of paper on his desk and smacks Ethan Hunt’s shoulder with it.
“That’s for nearly giving me a heart attack with that motorcycle stunt of yours,” he says.
Ethan Hunt, in turn, winces when the file makes contact, then grins at the man in front of him. “Hi, Benji.”
“Hi, Ethan,” Benji replies, his own grin threatening to spill over his current frown. “Also, I know you were grazed by a bullet on that side. I hit you on purpose so next time you will maybe take better care of yourself.”
“Message received,” Ethan says with a chuckle.
Brandt claps his shoulder – the one that wasn’t grazed by a bullet – and says, “Hunt, we’ll finish the debrief after lunch.” He points at Benji. “Make sure he gets some good food in him, he’s lost weight again because no one was there to forced him to eat regularly.”
With that, he walks away from the desk again, leaving the two men on their own.
Benji squints at Hunt. “See, this is what happens when I’m not allowed to come with you.”
“Benji, you got shot in the leg last month. You wouldn’t’ve been safe with it unhealed.” Hunt sounds exasperated and it’s clear that they’ve had this argument before.
“Whatever,” Benji replies, sounding every bit as whiney and annoying as he has these past few weeks, but still, teetering on the edge of a grin. With a sigh, he gets out of his chair – a very nice, orthopedic one that Paul is quite jealous of, Paul might add.
It seems that Hunt has also noticed the chair because he asks, “this new?”
“Yeah.” A smirk slips onto Benji’s face. “Apology gift from the IMF after the last time we got disavowed.”
“Why did I not get anything?”
Benji flutters his eyelashes exaggeratedly. “Because Brandt thinks my face is prettier.”
Hunt huffs out a laugh. “He’s right for once.”
Benji coughs. “Alright, now let’s get some food in you.”
If Paul didn’t know better, he’d say he was blushing.
Benji places a hand between Hunt’s shoulder blades, the two of them falling into step with ease as Benji guides them out of the room towards the cafeteria.
Paul is left with more questions than answers.
iii.
“He doesn’t like Prague.”
Ilsa looks up from the mission briefing she has been pretending to read as she secretly watched Ethan for the past ten minutes and finds Benji watching Ethan, too.
“What do you mean?” she asks, matching the low tone of his voice, quiet enough for Ethan not to hear them where he’s pacing back and forth on the other side of the room from them.
Finally, Benji drags his eyes away from Ethan and turns to face her, his body tilting in her direction at the movement of his head as he slides closer to her on the sofa they are sat on right beneath a window. The lights from the cars on the street below light up his face periodically but he seems not to notice, or not to care.
His voice drops even lower, bare audible even in this vicinity. “Don’t tell him I told you this. His first team died on a mission in Prague. His mentor betrayed them. That’s why he seems a bit – ” he trails off.
“Frazzled?” Ilsa completes the sentence for him. She has been wondering what is going on with Ethan ever since they realised they would have to go to Prague to grab a hold of a weapon’s dealer that has already slipped through their fingers in London.
“Yeah. I wouldn’t tell you this under normal circumstances, but he’s been on edge ever since we got here and I’m worried about him acting irrationally on the mission tomorrow.”
“You mean, more irrationally than usual.”
Benji huffs, a grin slipping onto his lips. “I guess.”
“Did he tell you about the team?”
Benji gives her an incredulous look. “Come on, Ilsa. This is Ethan we’re talking about. I had to dig through years of old mission reports and hack myself into at least three top-top-top-secret-and-secure archives to find out why he avoids going to Prague if he can.”
“Just his luck that we ended up in Prague on this mission, anyhow.”
Benji hums in agreement, and they both turn to Ethan where he is still pacing the room in a rare display of nerves. She’s been observing his nervousness shine through all day, cataloguing his tells in the back of her mind – you never know what they might be good for later.
“Look, details are fuzzy as to what happened because most of the files from that mission were blacked out almost entirely, but just make sure you keep an eye on him, tonight.”
“Sure,” Ilsa says, her eyes flickering back to Benji, watching him as he watches Ethan. It reminds her of earlier in the mission when they were in London, when Benji went undercover and Ethan spent the entire time glued to the monitor in their little van, watching Benji’s every move to make sure he was still safe.
Something in her mind clicks. She decides to keep it to herself, for now, and let them figure it out on their own.
iv.
Yasmin is used to seeing her customers in various states of disarray.
She has been serving food in the IMF’s cafeteria for longer than most of the agents have been employed here and she has seen it all – broken legs, bloody faces, guns, brawls, field agents having bad days, peppy newcomers talking too much, and bleary-eyed technicians getting a fresh supply of caffeine.
Benji, a sweetheart of an agent with a lovely British accent, is mostly put together today when comes to swipe his card at her checkout. She enters his usual afternoon cappuccino into her computer that he always gets around this time of day whenever he’s not gone on a mission.
“Yasmin! How are you today?” he greets her, and she gives him a warm smile.
“I’m great, sugar, how are you doing?”
“Good, good,” Benji replies, then leans in conspiratorially. “Listen, I’m gonna need one of those forbidden Snickers you keep hidden in that drawer.”
Yasmin might not be a secret agent, herself, but she has a damn good poker face and she doesn’t move a muscle at Benji’s request. “I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean, honey. You know we’re not allowed to sell anything with peanuts because of high-risk allergies.”
Benji purses his lips, then whispers, “look, it’s for Ethan. He’s having a bad day and I want to bring him a snack for when he wakes up, he’s currently taking a nap on the couch in Brandt’s office.”
Well, that certainly changes things.
Yasmin doesn’t usually play favorites, but she does have a soft spot for Ethan, who has been at the IMF for longer than most and always has time for a smile and a quick chat whenever he stops by in her cafeteria, so she’s taken up to storing technically forbidden Snickers in the drawer under her cash register after he once complained about craving them but there not being any in the vending machine.
“I didn’t know Ethan was telling his friends about those,” Yasmin says as she unlocks the drawer and grabs a Snickers from her stash, wrapping it in a napkin and placing it on Benji’s tray. She knows exactly where the cameras are in the cafeteria – safety measures – which means she knows the Snickers will not show on any videos, just her handing a customer a napkin. She also knows that the cameras won’t show the small 5.7 pistol she keeps in the same drawer – for self-defense whenever the next evil mastermind decides to take over IMF headquarters, or something. She might not be a secret agent, but there are things you pick up when working for a top-secret agency for this long.
Benji shrugs. “Don’t worry, I don’t think he’s really telling anyone. He just told me, once, when we were stuck on a stakeout together for twelve hours and didn’t have anything else to talk about anymore.” He swipes his card and picks his tray up.
“Right.” Yasmin privately wonders if sharing the story about the Snickers has less to do with boredom and more with the fact that Ethan mentions Benji almost every time she sees him, always with that big, beaming grin of his. But it’s not her place to speculate, so she just says, “Well, tell Ethan I said hi. Now you go and sure he feels better soon.”
“Thank you, Yasmin. I will.” Benji replies, a small smile playing on his lips as he walks away with his tray.
Not her place to speculate, Yasmin reminds herself. If she were to speculate, though, the signs would be pretty telling.
v.
The two men stumble in at one in the morning.
One of them is propping the other up, subtly, but Claudia has watched enough drunken guests cross the hotel lobby after their bachelor parties and graduation celebrations to immediately recognise the act of support.
“We’d like a room for two nights, please,” the man currently being leant on by his companion says once they’ve reached her reception desk, speaking with a lovely British accent. Claudia can’t hide her wince as their faces are lit up by her desk lamp and she sees the scrapes across his companion’s cheek, the bruise covering his right eye, the dried blood on his forehead. He’s wearing a lovely black suede jacket that is covered in dust and ripped on one sleeve.
Despite his state, he manages to throw a half-hearted polite smile in her direction that is almost believable if Claudia hadn’t worked in customer service all her life and was very familiar with the art of half-hearted polite smiles.
The other man turns to look at his companion and seconds Claudia’s wince as if this is the first time he has seen the injuries in good light. “Yeah, my partner here just had a nasty fall off his motorbike. I’m gonna get him cleaned up.” He raises a bag he is holding in his free hand that displays the logo of a local pharmacy.
Claudia schools her face back into a somewhat professional expression and says, “I’m sorry to hear that.” Then, with a glance at the way his arm is firmly holding onto the injured man’s waist and the earlier partner still echoing in her brain, she types a few things into her computer and continues, “I have a room ready for the two of you with a king-sized bed and a balcony with a lovely view. Can I get your names, please?”
The injured man mumbles something like, “wait, we’re not –” but he gets interrupted by the British man saying,
“Luke and Finn Miller. Is it possible to pay by cash?”
“Absolutely,” Claudia says as she types in their names with an internal fist pump at guessing their marital status correctly. She tells him the amount owed for the room and for the first time in their interaction he lets go of his husband’s waist to dig out a wallet and procure the needed cash.
“Here you go,” he says, and thanks her when he gets the room keys in return, his arm immediately sneaking back around his husband’s waist. “I’ll go take care of this one, then. Good night to you.”
“Good night!” Claudia calls after them as she watches their figures walk towards the elevator. She just hopes that whatever happened with the British man’s husband, he doesn’t have too many injuries under his clothes.
+ i.
“Why did you tell her we were husbands?” Ethan asks when they’re in the elevator.
Benji is still supporting most of his weight and he’s pretty that Ethan at least sprained, if not broke his ankle in that final tumble off his motorcycle.
At Ethan’s question, he shrugs, a sudden bashfulness coming over him from who-knows-where. “Was easier that way. Fewer questions.”
Ethan nods at his side.
There has been a subtle flirtation between the two of them in the recent months – years, probably, if Benji is honest with himself – but nothing has come off it yet and Benji isn’t sure if anything will come of it. Ethan is his best friend and he doesn’t want to ruin that by misreading the situation and making a move when it isn’t wanted.
The elevator dings as they get to their floor and Ethan audibly sighs in relief when he sees that their room is right next to the elevator, which tells Benji that he is really not feeling good.
“Alright, buddy, let’s get you somewhere to sit down.” Benji unlocks the door to their room and finds, as promised, a king-sized bed. Next to the door that leads to the bathroom is an armchair, into which Benji dumps Ethan.
“Right.” The problem-solving part of Benji’s brain takes over. He helps Ethan out of his probably ruined-beyond-repair jacket and only passively mourns the way it made Ethan’s shoulders look. Rustling around in the bag he got from a pharmacy in a rush, he grabs the disinfectant wipes and begins cleaning the scrapes on Ethan’s face, loosely holding Ethan’s jaw to tilt his head in whatever direction he needs. Thankfully, none of the wounds are deep enough to need bandages, even though Ethan’s black eye is looking worse by the minute.
Benji doesn’t know which injuries stem from the motorcycle crash and which are from the following skirmish with the henchman for the hard drive that supposedly holds the key to humanity’s extinction – once again. Said hard drive is now safely stowed away between bandages and painkillers in Benji’s plastic bag from the pharmacy, and said henchman is probably pretty banged up and making on his way back to his boss, but that’s a problem for someone else to worry about. All Ethan and Benji have to do, according to the instructions they got over a public telephone box, is hunker down in this hotel for two days until they are brought back in by IMF, which should be a piece of cake.
Finished with Ethan’s face, Benji moves on to the rest of his body.
“Can I take your shirt off?” he asks, using it both as a means go get consent and as a way to keep Ethan awake – he’s pretty sure he has a mild concussion, but that’s a regular occurrence for Ethan, so he doesn’t worry too much about it.
“I’m fine,” Ethan wheezes out, but complies and helps Benji unbutton the shirt, brushing it aside when they are done so Benji can ascertain that he’s telling the truth.
Benji runs his hands along Ethan’s sides, the movement clinical and barely touching his skin unless he has to as he checks him for injuries, ignoring the part of his brain that is screaming at their proximity and wants nothing more than to reach out and really touch Ethan’s well-defined chest. It seems like luck was on their side, here, too, because all Benji finds is some bruises and no broken bones as far as he can tell. That leaves the ankle.
Together, they get Ethan out of his dark jeans with minor wincing from Ethan. There are some scrapes on his knees that Benji ignores because they don’t look out of the ordinary. The ankle is swollen, so Benji helps Ethan move to the bed, where they prop the leg up on some pillows. Benji grabs a cold water bottle from the mini fridge to help the swelling go down, then, after a moment of deliberation, grabs himself a coke, too. IMF will pay for it, anyway, and it’s going to be a long night for him.
Digging through the pharmacy bag again, Benji gets out some concussion-approved painkillers and thanks his past self for paying attention during the IMF’s first aid classes as they were told which medication goes with what kind of injury. Ethan swallows the pills dry and his eyelids flutter close almost immediately after.
Benji stands next to his friend where he is lying on the bed and can’t help but reach out and gently brush some hair out of his face. Ethan is still wearing his shirt and has even done some buttons back up, to the chagrin of a part of Benji’s brain that he’s trying to ignore, but he has left enough buttons open that said part of Benji’s brain has something to ogle, which he immediately tries to stop himself from doing.
“I’ll wake you up in an hour to check on your head,” he says and Ethan just barely nods. Benji can tell that he’s out within seconds.
He wiggles out of his own jeans, leaving his t-shirt on as he slides under the bedsheets on the other side of the bed. He sets a timer on his phone for an hour, then grabs the remote lying on the nightstand and turns on the television.
Somehow, his hand finds its way back to Ethan’s head, fingers running through his hair in a soothing motion as he flicks through channels and absentmindedly watches a rerun of some Grey’s Anatomy episodes as the adrenaline from earlier slowly begins to ebb away.
An hour passes surprisingly quickly and when the alarm on his phone rings, Ethan wakes up on his own, first slowly moving a bit and then blinking his eyes open, immediately finding Benji in the room.
“Morning, princess,” Benji says, rolling over to his side so that it’s easier to talk to Ethan, propping himself up on his elbow in a way that allows him to keep running his hand through Ethan’s hair. “How are we feeling?”
Ethan smiles up at him. “Pretty good,” he replies, voice barely louder than a whisper. “Should get injured more often if I get free head massages out of it.”
Benji’s first instinct is to jerk his hand away from Ethan’s hair now that someone has brought it up, but he suppresses the reaction and leaves the hand there. He does squint at Ethan, though. “I’ll give you free massages daily if it means I don’t have to worry about you crashing another vehicle or jumping out of another window.”
Ethan smirks up at him, lazy and soft. “You make a persuasive argument.”
Suddenly, Benji realises how close they’ve gotten, Ethan on his back, twisted slightly to face Benji better, Benji on his side close enough that he is almost hovering above his friend. His skin tingles at the realisation. Somehow, Benji is not scared at all.
“I’m serious,” he says. He stops moving his hand but lets it rest in Ethan’s hair, still. “The stuff you have to do for work is way too dangerous, anyway. The least you could do is try not to always take the most dangerous option possible so that I won’t get an aneurysm from all the worrying.”
Ethan blinks, then a smile spreads over his face, the kind of reassuring smile that somehow always manages to make Benji feel safe and secure and like nothing bad is going to happen. Ethan brings up his hand to cradle Benji’s jaw.
“Don’t worry, Benji,” he murmurs, and it’s like a warm blanket settles over Benji at the sound of his own name from Ethan’s lips. “I’ll take care of myself.”
Suddenly, Benji is not sure what they were talking about just now. All he can focus on is their nearness, their bodies almost, but not quite touching yet, apart from where Benji’s hand rests in Ethan’s hair and Ethan’s palm is engulfing his face, all he can focus on is the speck of brown in Ethan’s eyes, all he can focus on is the callouses of Ethan’s fingers against his cheek.
“I’d really like to kiss you,” he blurts out.
Ethan exhales a low chuckle and he almost surprised at Benji’s outburst, but then he says, “C’mere, then,” and gently pulls Benji down.
It’s a soft kiss, a soft series of kisses, no sense of urgency between them as their lips meet again and again. Benji lets his grip tighten in Ethan’s hair, brings his other hand up to rest at the back of Ethan’s neck and he smiles into the kisses when he feels Ethan’s free arm wrap around his waist, pulling him closer until –
“Careful, your ankle – ”
“To hell with my ankle –”
“Okay, wait, slow down.” Benji ruefully pulls away, hating himself for being the reasonable one. “Let’s put a pin in anything more physical until when you’re not concussed anymore.”
Ethan lets his head fall back into his pillow with a groan. “Benji, you’re killing me here.”
He’s grinning though, and Benji is pretty sure he’s beaming back at him just as brightly.
He can’t believe that he has spent so long pretending like he doesn’t have a crush on his best friend and here they are and it somehow feels like the most natural thing in the world to lean back down and give Ethan a peck on his lips.
“Time to go back to sleep, now. I’ll wake you up again in another two hours or so to check your brain again. We’ll talk about this in the morning.”
For a moment, Ethan pouts, but then mirrors Benji’s smile again, his face melting into something soft. “This is more than just something physical, though, right?”
Benji exhales a shaky laugh. “I hope so. Don’t think my poor heart could take it, otherwise.”
“Well, we do want to protect your heart.” Ethan is clearly dozing off already, but before he’s completely asleep, he opens an eye again and grins at Benji. “After all, the nice lady at the reception already thinks we’re married, anyway.”
With that, he drops off. Benji turns back to the television, his hand back to running through Ethan’s hair. He can’t wait for the morning to arrive.